KANSAS CITY, Mo. Toy designer Debbie Glassberg has created dream houses for My Little Pony and Polly Pocket. Now she’s creating one for herself.
Instead of plastic, the building blocks being used for her residence are five steel cargo containers. The unusual home in Brookside, a Kansas City, Mo., neighborhood, has the area and Midwestern architectural circles talking.
“It’s exciting,” says Glassberg, 47, who gets stopped by strangers daily about her home. “It’s not even finished, but it’s built great connections and friendships.”
The house with its blocky sky-blue components is similar to homes featured in Dwell magazine.
Containers, originally intended to hold furniture and other household goods shipped overseas, are becoming structures themselves in other parts of the world. There are artists’ studios in London, student dormitories in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and offices in Zurich, Switzerland, all built from containers.
Glassberg’s house is one of only a few container homes in the United States.
Durable but attractive housing
Glassberg, a former designer for Mattel, wants her house to serve as a prototype for durable but attractive emergency housing for survivors of natural disasters like those that struck New Orleans and Greensburg, Kan.
“It would be an interesting alternative to FEMA trailers, that’s for sure,” says Scott Lane, who recently accompanied a group of Iowa State University architecture students on a tour of the house.
Lane is one of the founders of KC Modern, an organization that promotes and records the history of the area’s diverse architectural styles.
“It’s amazing what she’s doing,” he says.
Why shipping containers? They’re mobile, easily transported by trains and trucks, Glassberg says. And they’re eco-friendly.
“The packaging is the building material,” she says. “So there’s little waste.”
Design was a challenge
Glassberg, with a 25-year background in industrial design, is working as her own contractor for the home along with boyfriend Todd Nelson, an audio/video systems designer. Glassberg’s 17-year-old son, Sam Glassberg, also will live there.
The shipping containers are standard dimensions at 40 feet long and 8 feet wide. But Glassberg’s containers are taller than the typical 8 feet. Three are 12 feet tall, and the two others are 9-1/2 feet high.
“The taller containers allowed for bigger windows, creating a lighter, airier feeling,” says Glassberg, who hired architects at BNIM in Kansas City.
The containers are designed as separate units, so individual containers could be moved elsewhere if Glassberg moves. One container is a large two-person office. Another is a loft “dorm room” for Sam. Two containers joined together form a master suite with two walk-in closets, a laundry area and a bathroom. The house also features two additional full bathrooms and a TV room with space for guests to sleep. The living/dining room is just off the galley kitchen.
Designing living space with shipping containers was challenging.
“We thought it would feel cramped, but we’re surprised at how generous the space feels,” says architect Steve McDowell of BNIM, who had never worked on a container structure before. “I’m jealous.”
Eco-friendly technologies
The house will use eco-friendly technologies, including sugar beet foam insulation, geothermal heating and cooling, bamboo flooring, tankless water heaters and LED lighting. A Kansas City Art Institute student is designing rain-barrel benches. The roof will be planted and used as a patio. Surrounded by branches, the space feels like a secluded tree house.
Interior work on the house is under way. Like the exterior, it will feature plenty of surprises, including decorative wall panels, burl wood veneers and plastic chandeliers. She hopes to sell these unique types of finishes and fixtures in the future.
Glassberg envisions designing other fully finished containers in the future as affordable housing solutions for about $125 per square foot. Because her home is a prototype, involving lots of city inspections, she didn’t design the interior spaces before having the containers shipped.
So far city officials have approved Glassberg’s plans for the container house, except for the driveway. Glassberg wants the driveway to be made of grass that grows through a recycled plastic grid, similar to that at a home built by University of Kansas architecture students in Kansas City, Kan.
“I still haven’t made my mind up about the driveway,” says Glassberg, “because I’m hoping they’ll come around on it.”
At 2,600 square feet, her home will have cost more than $300,000 to build. She’s selling her current residence, a 1920s Dutch Colonial in Crestwood, Mo.
When the house is finished in a few months, Glassberg plans to throw neighborhood parties and open it up to the public for tours.
Similar Posts:
- Future living: in an oil refinery
- Getting The Perfect Driveway Lighting
- Micro-Home Concept Turns Electric Cars into Spare Spaces
- Contemporary Perforated House by Kavellaris Urban Design
- Organizing Your Kitchen Cabinets
